it is well with my soul

“It is well with my soul.”

Grace.  I’m overwhelmed by grace when I sing this song.  I’ve come to the point where I don’t know how to put into words what this song makes me feel.  It always tugs at my heart and awakens me to God’s unfathomable grace as if for the first time.  It has always been one of my favorite hymns, not just for the melody and the lyrics, but also for the story behind it.

Horatio Spafford was a successful lawyer and a happily married man who lived in Chicago with his wife, son, and four little daughters.  Yet soon, his life came crumbling down around him.  In 1871, he lost his four-year-old son to scarlet fever.  When the Great Chicago Fire swept through the city, he lost his estate, all of his investments, and was left with nothing.  The fire choked out everything he had owned.   

Left with nothing but his wife and daughters, he decided to take his family to England for another chance at life.  Unfortunately, he was delayed from making the journey, and sent his wife and girls ahead of him on a ship bound for Europe.  While crossing the Atlantic, the steamship was struck by another vessel and hundreds of the passengers perished at sea.  All four of Spafford’s young daughters died in the tragedy.  His wife, though injured, survived alone.  Upon arriving to England, she sent her husband a telegram telling him that she had been “saved alone”.  Wretched and broken, Spafford set sail for England to be with his grieving wife.  On his journey over the Atlantic Ocean, the ship passed over the place where his daughters had been lost to the sea, and it was then that he wrote “It is well with my soul”. 

The story is gripping, but also amazing.  The verses take on a new meaning.  As he passed over the place where his own children had died, he wrote, “when sorrows like sea billows roll…”  Yet though he had lost everything—his prominent position as a lawyer, his estate, all of his possessions, his son and four daughters—he looked not to earth but to heaven, and wrote, “It is well with my soul.” 

This song stirs my soul so deeply.  Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say: It is well, it is well with my soul.  I want my whole life to be about that.  I want to say in every circumstance, “Father, through this may I delight in you still more.”  Through storm and through fire, through the trials of this life, may my longing for Him and my desire to be Home grow. 

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.

 CHORUS:It is well (it is well),
with my soul (with my soul),
It is well, it is well with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

CHORUS

My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole, Is nailed to His cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

CHORUS

For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live:
If Jordan above me shall roll,
No pain shall be mine, for in death as in life
Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul.

CHORUS

And Lord haste the day, when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.

It is well (it is well),
with my soul (with my soul),
It is well, it is well with my soul.